Yousuf Karsh Photography

Pablo Picasso

Yousuf Karsh, (Armenian name: Hovsep Karsh; December 23, 1908 – July 13, 2002) was an Armenian-Canadian photographer best known for his portraits of notable individuals. He has been described as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the 20th century.

An Armenian Genocide survivor, Karsh migrated to Canada as a refugee. By the 1930s he established himself as a significant photographer in Ottawa, where he lived most part of his adult life, though he traveled extensively for work. His iconic 1941 photograph of Winston Churchill was a breakthrough point in his 60-year career, throughout of which he took numerous photos of known political leaders, men and women of arts and sciences. Over 20 photos by Karsh appeared on the cover of Life magazine, until he retired in 1992.

Ernest Hemingway

Charles de Gaulle


Andy Warhol


Humphrey Bogart


Gérard Depardieu


W. H. Auden


Muhammad Ali


Albert Einstein


Winston Churchill


Elizabeth Taylor




Albert Schweitzer


Jacques Couseteau


Vladimir Nabokov


Marian Anderson


Marcel Marceau


John F. Kennedy


Mikhail Gorbachev


Alfred Hitchcock


Winston Churchill


Joan Crawford


Henry Fonda


Walt Disney


Albert Einstein 


Alberto Giacometti


Grace Kelly


Joan Miró


George Bernard Shaw


Jean Sibelius


Fidel Castro


Audrey Hepburn


Georgia O’Keeffe


Albert Camus


Pierre Trudeau


Robert Frost


Eleanor Roosevelt


Yul Brynner


Pablo Casals


Anna Magnani


Joan Crawford


Anita Ekberg


Brigitte Bardot


Helen Keller

Sophia Loren